Officers from the University of Colorado Police Department conducted drills Wednesday intended to train and prepare them should there be a shooting on the Boulder campus.

In a vacated building on CU's East Campus, near Foothills Parkway and Colorado Avenue, 15 police officers spent the afternoon in "active shooter training," aided by actors who played the role of the gunman and victims.

The CU Police Department first began the training scenarios soon after the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, though Wednesday's drill was particularly relevant in light of recent mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December and at the Century 16 cineplex in Aurora last July.

College campuses, including CU, increased their attention on security following the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, during which gunman Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people and injured 17 others in two attacks that were about two hours apart.